I mean with speaking and listening, not reading and writing.

erm is hard in sense that it is a total different way of speaking but if u mix with people who speaks Cantonese it would be easier or even stay in a city that that people in that city speak Cantonese

OMG...they are totally different..

I am a Chinese&I speak Mandarin,but I'm still learnin' Cantonese...&many people speak fluent Mandarin have to LEARN Cantonese from the very beginin' U know...

They sound not the same,(actually I like Cantonese..xp)Cantonese sound not as "plain" as Mandarin...

I think if U can speak fluent Mandarin,U can almost understand the Candonese,but not ALL!!!

In some ways, yes. For people who have trouble with tones especially, since Cantonese is much richer in tone distinctions.

The two share the same writing and general usage of phrases and sentence structure. So if you already know Mandarin, you may find it easy to figure how to put a sentence together BUT the tonation of the two languages is quite different. Only some words are the same.

That said, with Mandarin as a foundation, it would be easier to learn how to understand it than to speak.

Cantonese is a bit harder.

nope, not at all, the two is almost the same, when you learn mandarin's whole body, it is easy to learn cantonese too.

Yes and vice versa. It's not just learning to speak with a different accent. It's learning the all mechanisms of a sub-language. I would equate it to a French person trying to learn Spanish.

Unless you plan on living in Hong Kong, there is no practical use for Cantonese. Trying to learn Cantonese when you know Mandarin is a waste of time.

I learn Chiense and spoke with my girlfriedn in Chinese but she is Cantonese so begun learning Cantonese too..
so i am perfect answerer...
and I think no.......
though this lagnauge has diffuct tones....
but it's ike leaning Spanish knowwing italian.....
easier..
but pronoutiation.........
and problems with writing......
and there are some onyl cantonse charaters tooo..
but as somenone is used to it..
there is no problem in leanring these some new ones...
like they write
??
as tomorow (if i ain't wrong)

I'm not sure about that but I have seen many people who are well-versed in Mandarin have a difficulty to speak cantonese fluently but I have also seen some of these people managed to master cantonese.

please dont listen to the others... i think they were just typing stuff to sound smart (not all of them) anyway...
cantonese and mandarin have SOME words that are the same or similar.... but it is completely different.... for example, i grew up speaking cantonese. that is the dialect im most fluent in. i have an aunt by marriage from northern china and she can only speak mandarin... when we have a get together, everyone has to speak mandarin so she will not be left out. she cannot speak cantonese, even though she has spoken mandarin all her life.... however most people that grow up speaking mandarin find it more difficult to learn cantonese than people who grew up with cantonese trying to speak mandarin.
cantonese has more tones and the rise and fall in the sounds are SO important. for example the word suger has a rise in it(tong) the word soup in it has a fall (tong) they sound exactly the same... it is like this for many word in the cantonese language

If you already master the 5 tones of Mandarin and if you have understood the way a tonal language works it's not that difficult anymore to learn Cantonese which has 9 tones. Nevertheless, you still need to study hard!!!